“The Force Is The Fans”: What Star Wars Celebration Japan Taught Us About That Galaxy Far, Far Away

A week ago today, Ryan Gosling took to the Live Stage at Star Wars Celebration Japan to share a message with the thousands gathered in the Makuhari Messe Convention Centre. “As I’m here,” said the Canadian actor, fresh off the rockstar-like reveal that he would be leading Shawn Levy’s newly announced Star Wars: Starfighter, “I feel like the Force is the fans. And all we can hope is, ‘May the fans be with us.’” In the moment, it was a quippy turn of phrase to avoid giving anything away about Levy’s secretive new Star War; but by the end of the weekend, it seemed like the perfect summation of the current state of play in our beloved galaxy far, far away.

It would be fair to say that there has been a sense of a disturbance in the Force, both on the part of the fans and Lucasfilm, of late. Online discourse about The Rise Of Skywalker and The Last Jedi continues to rage on unabated, despite both movies having been released over half a decade ago now; more recent projects like the The Acolyte, The Book Of Boba Fett, and the third season of The Mandalorian have been met with pushback, too, earning the former a massively disappointing early cancellation after just one season; and even as Andor Season 2 arrives on Disney+ this week, deservingly garlanded by near-peerless critical acclaim, denizens of the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the internet continue to make an almighty racket about the “adultification”, “wokeification”, and “politicisation” of Star Wars — a franchise, it bears noting, that was at least in part born in response to atrocities committed by the US during the Vietnam War.

The Force really is the fans — and the fans are strong with this one.

And it’s not just online that there’s been tension, either. As mentioned above, The Acolyte — a Leslye Headland created, High Republic set series that challenged our conception of the Jedi and dared to move beyond Skywalker storytelling into a bold new era — was dropped after a single season despite its blockbuster production values, lore-rich narrative, and abundant star power. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s New Jedi Order movie, which is set to see Daisy Ridley’s Rey return as a Jedi Master, lost writer Steven Knight late last year, before finding a new path with Ocean’s Twelve writer George Nolfi. And, for a good few months now, whispers that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy may be stepping back from her post have been getting louder, despite consistent official refutations to the contrary.

All of which is to say that it would be very easy, doomscrolling our social media feeds, to imagine that Star Wars — a franchise of unparalleled staying power and pop cultural influence that’s been beguiling younglings and wisened masters alike for almost 50 years now — has, after all these years, finally succumbed to the Dark Side. But then you witness an event like Star Wars Celebration, the (bi-)annual convention wholly devoted to all things the universe George Lucas built, and you very quickly realise that the Force really is the fans — and the fans are strong with this one.

Over the course of a glorious three days in a massive convention centre a hop, skip, and a tube ride away from Tokyo, Empire was on the ground to witness the wonder of Star Wars Celebration first-hand. From the instant ovation that greeted the news that Hayden Christensen will play Anakin Skywalker again in Ahsoka Season 2, to the cacophonous cheers that broke out when Lucasfilm Animation’s 20th anniversary panel closed with the surprise reveal that Maul: Shadow Lord will be the next major animated series from the team behind The Clone Wars and Rebels, to the lightsabers lit and raised skywards as con compère DJ Elliot welcomed a Chilean cosplayer dressed as a stormtrooper Freddie Mercury to the stage to lead a chorus of “Ayo”s, the communal sense of love and affection for Star Wars — and the specificity, unapologetic nerdiness, and deep well of emotion involved in that love and affection — was frankly awesome to behold.

The overwhelming feeling at Celebration is a communal sense of that ethereal, foundational rock on which all Star Wars is built — hope.

From a certain point of view, the Star Wars fandom has taken a recent-years heel turn, pivoting Anakin-like from bringing balance to the Force to turning it to darkness as ragebaiting YouTubers, co-ordinated social media harassment campaigns against the franchise’s stars, and bad faith discourse instigated by online trolls has dominated online spaces, stifling meaningful debate and discussion in favour of anger, hate. But from another point of view, with feet on the ground and eyes open wide in a room of 10,000 fans from over 125 countries and all walks of life, the overwhelming feeling is a communal sense of that ethereal, foundational rock on which all Star Wars is built — hope.

Wandering the show floor at the Makuhari Messe, we found ourselves dropping in to hear Ahmed Best, Anthony Daniels, and Ashley Eckstein discuss their roles as ‘The Heroic Sidekicks Of Star Wars’, each one’s words hung on reverently by fans who’d parked telescopic camping chairs at the Live Stage in the hopes of glimpsing the actors behind their favourite characters. Turning around, we were met by an artist proudly waving a handmade Grogu piece constructed using traditional Japanese art techniques (the irrepressible star of The Mandalorian & Grogu was everywhere across Celebration’s merch and marketing, and the movie’s Day One panel, featuring a surprise appearance from sci-fi queen and soon-to-be New Republic commander Sigourney Weaver, was the hottest ticket of the weekend by far.) Venturing further out, there were cosplayers dressed as Skeleton Crew’s Neel, Gen'Dai bounty hunter Durge from animator Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2003 Clone Wars miniseries, a surprising number of Director Krennics, kid Reys and Padmés and Leias, and more; hell, there was even a dude dressed as the guy in t-shirt and jeans who was in the back of shot in that one episode of The Mandalorian. One especially surreal moment even saw us bear witness to a pair of Anakin and Obi-Wan cosplayers perfectly recreating the Duel on Mustafar from Revenge Of The Sith, saber swing to saber swing, as onlookers enthusiastically quoted lines from the battle and hummed John Williams’ iconic score. Everywhere you turned, someone was living their best Star Wars loving life, and a whole bunch more people were right there living it with them.

Whether your preferred flavour of Star Wars is the Original Trilogy, the Prequels (which seem to be gaining in affection year on year as anniversaries come and go), the Sequels, or the wider canon — shows, games, books, animated series, comics, the old Expanded Universe — it matters not. It was abundantly clear from spending a few days in the company of dyed-in-the-wool fans and new padawans in the ways of the Force alike that while there is perhaps something to be said for the oversaturation of ‘content’ in the years since Disney acquired Lucasfilm (and, at times, the quality control *cough* The Book Of Boba Fett *cough*), there has also never been more ways to be a Star Wars fan than there are right now. And whatever floats your skiff, there’s a corner of the Star Wars community just as in the tank and mad for it and passionate about it as you are.

You want a serious dissection of the mechanics of oppression and rebellion amid a fascist regime? Here’s Andor. You want a monster-of-the-week riff on Lone Wolf & Cub starring Pedro Pascal and the cutest lil’ guy in the galaxy? The Mandalorian is right there. You want an epic, nine-movie spanning story of families and feuding, good and evil, the battle to find balance between the light and the dark imbued with a Shakespearean sensibility and energised by laser swords, scruffy-looking nerf herders, and ‘pew-pew’ filled space dogfights that immaculately act as a showcase of half a century of industry leading developments in visual effects? The Skywalker Saga will do it. Hell, did you ever wonder what a female led Indiana Jones, set in space, might look like? Read the Doctor Aphra comics. They’re ruddy marvellous.

At this precise moment, for all the talk of cancelled projects and fumbled filmmakers, the slate for upcoming Star Wars projects is perhaps healthier than it has ever been. As Kathleen Kennedy confirmed on Celebration’s opening day, James Mangold’s Dawn Of The Jedi movie is still very much happening, as is a new trilogy from Simon Kinberg, an as-yet-untitled Taika Waititi joint, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s New Jedi Order, and the shooting soon Shawn Levy x Ryan Gosling Star Wars: Starfighter. And over on the TV side of things, we’ve got Andor Season 2 dropping a movie’s worth of Star Wars every week right now, mini-series Tales Of The Underground readying a 4 May drop (we’ve seen the first episode — don’t sleep on it!), the aforementioned Maul: Shadow Lord animated series coming in 2026, and Ahsoka Season 2 — which starts shooting this week — hitching a ride on a Purrgil to join it. And that’s without even accounting for another season of Star Wars Visions releasing in October, or the announcement we had at Celebration of Star Wars Visions Presents, a new strand of the animated anthology series set to bring us longer form versions of fan-favourite Visions stories.

And that’s just the films and shows; there’s a whole galaxy of books, comics, games, and VR thingamajigs in the pipeline too, many of which we glimpsed as we sped at lightspeed past merch stands, food halls, and giant inflatable Ewoks to go and have a cathartic cry with a roomful of fans at a special screening of Star Wars Rebels’ season finale.

All of which is to say that whether you flew out to Japan to bask in the unremitting good vibes of Star Wars Celebration, followed along on our socials or Star Wars’ YouTube channel, or are just now, reading this, getting a steer on the mood among the fandom as Disney and Lucasfilm prepare to release their first theatrical Star War since The Rise Of Skywalker next May, it seems abundantly clear that Ryan Gosling is right: the Force is the fans. And with that galaxy far, far away’s horizons opening up farther by the day as the Star Wars universe is reimagined and reshaped by a whole new generation of storytellers and fans, the Force — and the fandom — is strong as it ever was. And long may it continue to be.